Mr Ryan and the Pope held a private audience at the Vatican Monday to discuss the abuse both men suffered at Blackrock College and its preparatory school, Willow Park, in Co Dublin, as children.
Pope Leo XIX has apologised to Blackrock College abuse survivors David Ryan and his late brother Mark.
Speaking after the exchange, Mr Ryan said the newly elected pontiff was “so sorry to hear of my pain, for my family’s pain and for the other survivors that haven’t come forward yet.”
Abuse survivor and campaigner Colm O’Gorman told The Anton Savage Show on Newstalk Sunday that the meeting was “very significant to David Ryan and unprecedented in the context of such cases.”
“The Vatican is not good at this. When all of these stories started to emerge like when I came forward in the 90s, the Vatican was dismissing that abuse even happened: it was describing victims as fantasists.
“All of that ignores the simple fact that when bishops covered abuse, they weren’t mismanaging cases: they were following canon law.”
The founder of the charity One of Four, told Emmet Oliver that because most acknowledgements of abuse cases in the Vatican continue to only exist due to enormous pressure, they continue to be a deceit.
Colm O'Gorman. Picture by: RollingNews.ie.“No Pope has acknowledged that a cover up has happened which was willful and designed to protect the institution, its clergy and authority.
“When I came forward in 1995 it was only to report one bad priest who had done terrible things to me but within weeks I found out that the dioceses had known before they’d even ordained him as a priest.”
Mr O’Gorman told Newstalk that this information emboldened him to pursue legal action against the then Pope as he wanted the truth to be established.
He noted that David Ryan had gone through an exhaustive process in terms of criminal and civil law in vain at first.
Asked whether he expected the audience to be a breakthrough, Mr O’Gorman said he didn’t but that the real breakthrough was getting the State to recognise its responsibility in the protection of children.
“We're now at the point where the state could never suggest and nobody would ever suggest that that's a matter for the church to deal with”, he said.
“Child protection, the protection of people's human rights, the vindication of those rights,responding when those rights are being violated is the responsibility of the state.
“The state has obligations under national law, on international law to respond to these kinds of crimes when they happen, but also to try to ensure that they don't happen in the first instance.”
Main Image: Pople Leo XIX.
